Healthy Debate

Welcome to HSAA’s new blog!  The march of time and technology demands more interactive options and more frequent communications.

Regular contributors to the blog will include our Director of Labour Relations, Lynette McAvoy, our Senior Negotiator, Kerry Woollard, our Communications officer Scott Pattison and myself.  We will do quick hits on current issues, and hope that  will be of interest and use to members.  We welcome your comments and feedback, but reserve the right to edit or delete entries to protect the privacy of individuals, and to prevent inappropriate content.

Pandemic – So are you getting your H1N1 vaccination?  I’ve read, seen and heard lots of scientific information, and have seen several members and colleagues flattened by what they describe as one of the worst cases of flu they have ever experienced.  Add to that a sense of responsibility to avoid being the source, and my own personal wimpyness (is that even a word?) I fully intend to roll up my sleeve whenever the vaccine is again available to those not in high risk groups.

Voluntary Severance programme – While this is now available for all direct AHS employees, I will be interested to see how many HSAA members will actually be approved.  I don’t meet a lot of members who think their jobs are unnecessary.  Please do a very careful assessment before you make that application.  If you are about to retire anyway, this may be a good option, but remember that it will be approved only if your job, or another, can be eliminated. So be prepared to be turned down if they will need to fill your position.  If your job is going to be eliminated in any case, (e.g. the long proposed consolidation of gynecological cytology) you will do far better taking a layoff with the possibility of accessing the severance in the collective agreement – 2 weeks per year of service instead of 1.5, and the prohibition of working for AHS or a related employer is only for the length of the severance payment, vs. 2x in the voluntary programme.  If you have any uncertainty, please contact a labour relations officer before you commit yourself.

Dr. Duckett’s contest – So why is the contest only about cutting costs, and not about improving care?  Having said that, we’ve always known that the people on the front lines are full of great ideas, and know how ideas play out on the ground.  How about an ongoing contest that’s about great patient care, rather than an invitation to potentially undermining each other?  Don’t get sucked into proposing cuts to others’ jobs, or into undermining your own collective agreement!!!

Speaking of the CONTRACT – Repeat after me: We have a contract, we negotiated it in good faith, we expect it to be honoured!!! Free overtime says you are not worth your pay – don’t do it !!!!! Those of us who are long enough in the tooth to remember the ‘90s also recall that we took cuts with the hope of avoiding layoffs, and the betrayal we felt when the layoffs came anyway.  We remember that those who didn’t lose their jobs were left with the additional work burden, the management duties that were downloaded, and very frequently the survivor guilt.

And finally (for this post) the fightback campaigns – Whether it’s the campaign against the closure of Alberta Hospital Edmonton, the Friends of Medicare’s “Wrong Way” campaign or any other efforts to protect our public health care system, I urge you, I plead with you, to participate.  HSAA has been front and centre as an organization, but it is the weight of the numbers of our individual members, the personal contacts with your politicians, the letters that you, your family, neighbours and your friends write that will carry the day.  It’s about so much more than your jobs and livelihoods, but it is about those too.  You are also Albertans, someone’s mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter, and you are taxpayers!  Don’t let anyone tell you that you do not have a right to fight for MEDICARE!!

That’s my rant for today.  Now it’s your turn.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Elisabeth Ballermann. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.